98534 - Expired articles not automatically removed from list

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[WD]

BuildID:    2001090603

My News server expires articles after a certain period of time, as I would
expect most to.   The problem is, when I open a newsgroup, it always displays
all headers, including the expired articles.   All the expired ones do all show
up as non-bold, though.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Subscribe to a newsgroup on a server which expires articles
2.Re-visit that newsgroup at a later date, when some articles would be expired
3.

Actual Results:  The expired articles are still in the list of messages

Expected Results:  Expired articles are automatically removed from the list when
the newsgroup is clicked on and updated.  (no need to click link to manually do it)

If I click on an expired article, I get something like the following:

Error!
newsgroup server responded:no such article number in this group

Perhaps the article has expired

<pLMYl5dhX7hK-pn2-lhtnQDpCf40E@localhost> (284484)

Click here to remove all expired articles

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

isn't this a dupe of 97598 ?

Comment 2

[WD]

The original posting of bug 97598 is not the same as what I've described here. 
That bug is about clicking the link to delete expired articles not actually
doing anything.   But this bug is supposed to be about that link not even being
there in the first place.   (Mozilla should do housekeeping automatically,
without presenting a link to the user in the first place)

The last comment of bug 97598 seems to be along these lines I think...

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

Here's an example. I read n.p.m.mail-news via my ISP's news server. However it
expires old articles. Thus if I try an read the very first message that Mozilla
still has in its list I get this instead:

> Error!
>
> newsgroup server responded:article not available (15840 out of range)
>
> Perhaps the article has expired
>
> <[e-mail]> (15840)
>
> Click here to remove all expired articles

This is because the news server currently only holds 534 articles from 17677 to
18210. Surely Mozilla can automatically remove the headers for 15840 to 17676?

I don't know if this is related, but if I click Get Messages the total number of
messages drops to 534, until new headers get downloaded.

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

Upping severity slightly and adding regression because this did work in 4.x

Comment 5

[WD]

Is seems that there is a pref for this...
-> WFM

Comment 6

[WD]

I'm not sure what I was thinking here.
re-opening

Comment 7

[WD]

I'm upping the severity on this.
Without manual user intervention to clean up expired articles, the disk space
used by mozilla will keep growing and growing.....

Comment 8

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

I fail to see how this can be 4xp, when 4.x didn't have any automatic remove
functionality for expired articles.  I also fail to see how this can be a
regression, since technically that keyword is reserved for features that were
implemented and have stopped working.  Expired articles has remained at the same
level of functionality (or improved) since M3.

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

I can assure you that 4.x does automatically expire articles.

If I read, say, rec.humor.funny in 4.x I currently have 9 articles in the thread
pane because that's how many my ISP is keeping on its server.

Meanwhile Mozilla thinks there are 107 articles, because that's how long ago I
subscribed. So Mozilla is keeping unusable summary information on 98 articles :-(

Sorry for adding the regression keyword, I probably hadn't heard of 4xp then :-)

Comment 10

[Christian Emig]

No more work on this topic since 1.5 years? At least I would really appreciate
this feature.

Comment 11

[[e-mail]]

This is a typical NNTP log:

0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Receiving: 200 secnews.netscape.com Netscape-Collabra/3.52
03615 NNRP ready (posting ok).
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_LOGIN_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_SEND_MODE_READER
0[e24020]: (df14920) Sending: MODE READER
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Receiving: 200 secnews.netscape.com Netscape-Collabra/3.52
03615 NNRP ready (posting ok).
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_SEND_MODE_READER_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: SEND_FIRST_NNTP_COMMAND
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC
0[e24020]: (df14920) Sending: GROUP netscape.public.mozilla.layout
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Receiving: 211 11785 1 12603 netscape.public.mozilla.layout
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NEWS_DONE
0[e24020]: (df14920) Next state: NEWS_FREE
0[e24020]: (df14920) CleanupAfterRunningUrl()
0[e24020]: (df14920) setting busy to 0

In other words, news is simply ignoring the response to the GROUP command :-(

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

Actually I just figured that that's a bad example because article 1 exists.

0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NNTP_SEND_MODE_READER_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: SEND_FIRST_NNTP_COMMAND
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Sending: GROUP alt.pl.mozilla
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Receiving: 211 2233 1350 3582 alt.pl.mozilla
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC_RESPONSE
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NEWS_DISPLAY_NEWS_RC
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NEWS_DONE
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) Next state: NEWS_FREE
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) CleanupAfterRunningUrl()
0[e24020]: (df8ac00) setting busy to 0

I would expect this to expire articles 1-1349.

Comment 13

[Alan Eliasen]

There appears to be a regression.  Using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915, I no longer see the "remove expired messages" link when trying to open an expired message.  The message pane is entirely blank.  So now, newsgroups cannot even be expired manually, and increase without bound.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> There appears to be a regression.  ... I no longer see the "remove expired
> messages" link when trying to open an expired message.  The message pane is
> entirely blank.  So now, newsgroups cannot even be expired manually, and
> increase without bound.

Alan, do you still see this?
David, was this intentionally removed?  (I've never seen it myself)

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

no, I don't think it was intentional - could it be that there's a string missing, i.e., the string we use to generate the text of the expired article message.